Herculaneum
IV.18. House, linked to IV.17 the Taberna di Priapo.

According
to Wallace-Hadrill, this main entrance doorway led along a corridor to a
columned courtyard (tetrastyle atrium) surrounded by ten rooms. Stairs to upper
floor by doorway and at back. Possible hospitium.

See
Wallace-Hadrill, A., 1994. Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. New
Jersey: Princeton U.P. (p.201).

Maiuri
wrote, this house, like the preceding ones, was quite spacious but simple, almost
rustic.At one side there was a shop
(IV.17), with a communicating door between it and the actual dwelling house. It
was a dwelling of the commercial class, but it would seem the business was less
prosperous than that of the great corner shop and therefore it had a more
modest air.

The
house had a long corridor divided by a slight partition wall (perhaps for the
construction of the staircase leading to the upper floor) then it opened into a
little tetrastyle atrium closed by a pluteus or parapet, with a windowed
gallery above, upon which opened almost all of the rooms on the first floor, so
that the atrium fulfilled the function of a lightwell. The rooms, ruined by the
underground tunnels, retain very few of the original decoration.The triclinium which opened upon the east
side of the atrium with little paintings of fish and marine animals on the
walls was worthy of note, it was preceded by a small anteroom.